Archive

1.- The interviewee

Born in 1971, Bruno Accioly is a Brazilian author, lecturer and public speaker. Editor in Chief of SteamPunk.com.br since 2007, co-founder of the Conselho Steampunk in 2008 and of the Sociedade Retrofuturista (‘Retrofuturistic Society’) in 2010, he is one of the main promoters and developers of the Steampunk movement in his country.

2.- Past, present and future of Brazilian Steampunk

Bruno, welcome to our series of brief interviews!

Q.- The Conselho Steampunk was founded in June 2008 by Raul Cândido Ruiz and you, with only two Lodges (Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo). A couple of years ago it had reached other ten states, which is an irrefutable evidence of the success of this model in which the Conselho offers technological and cultural support to whoever wants to establish a Lodge in her/his state or to whoever wishes to join a Lodge as contributor. Talk to us about the Brazilian Steampunk community at present, please.

Bruno Accioly (BA).- Although Conselho SteamPunk is considered a large group, present in many states, there are a bunch of smaller groups of enthusiasts organizing in their own cities and Conselho SteamPunk itself, as it is not a centralized organization, has a diverse universe of members in terms of interests and talents.

Conselho SteamPunk offers some structure for the group of enthusiast interested in promoting the SteamPunk Culture, but it is expected that some people need to feel on the margin of the movement somehow protected from a possible “mainstream-ization” of the genre.

What I’ve noticed about the movement in Brazil is that the amount of people interested not only on SteamPlay (the SteamPunk cosplay) is growing or, maybe, the SteamPlayers are gathering around other aspects of the SteamPunk Culture.

The search for a brazilian identity for SteamPunk marches on and I think that, at least in terms of literature, we are getting there.